W.F. Strojie
Letter No. 79
March 27, 1985

The Operation of Error

Part Two

In Letter 78, I gave it as my opinion that Vatican II and it’s works is the fulfillment of St. Paul’s prophecy of an operation of error. For never has such a colossal fraud, actually preposterous, as is Vatican II “ecumenism”, been imagined. The second reason for this conclusion of mine, is that St. Paul’s prediction of a great Apostasy, of a revolt and the appearance of the AntiChrist, are closely linked in the chapter of II Thessalonians which contains these predictions – all the events to occur close to the end of time. It is for this reason I do not hesitate to rule out of consideration as the operation of error, the general movement we call Socialism or Communism. Communism is of the Vatican II spirit, but it is not the thing itself.

In I Thessalonians, St. Paul writes of a time when “They shall say ‘peace and security,’” at which time “sudden destruction shall come upon them.” The world powers produced the atom bomb and tested it on two large Japanese cities. They now live in abject fear of the destructive force let loose upon the world: and so have been saying “peace and security”, as no other generation of men have ever thought of it. Scarcely three months ago by without our hearing of a new “peace conference” among the political front-men of the world powers.

We need not join these atheists in abject fear that their destruction devices can destroy the world. That insane notion they have recently held, of man as all powerful, they continue to hold. But world will end as the Creator of the world wills to end it.

In these same writings, I have quoted Fr. Henry Coleridge, S.J., as saying that the Scriptural operation of error is judicial. On what does Fr. Coleridge base this conclusion? Quite certainly, on St. Paul’s words, 2 Thess. 2, 10: “Therefore God shall send them the operation of error, to believe lying.”

Notice that this action by God is extraordinary. It is not the usual permissive will of God in regard to error, but a positive divine decree.

Why does God decree this operation of error? St. Paul tells why: “because they receive not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.” It is a punishment for the men of our time, who regard not the truths of salvation.

In the time of Sodom and Gomorrah, and of the Flood, men had sunk deeply into sensual sins and were punished accordingly. These sensual sins are more widespread today than ever, but the sins of modern man most offensive to God are those of the intellect, by which God is, first, paid only lip service, then forgotten. God is no longer “relevant”, they say, unless He be at the service of man’s worldly progress.

This sin peculiar to the men of the twentieth century is that worst of sins, the sin against the Holy Ghost, which “will not be forgiven in ths world or the next.” If men despise Truth Itself, they will be permitted to believe lying.

Altogether new in this way, the Vatican II Council was announced as a ‘Pastoral Council’, said to be an inspiration of the Holy Spirit. There was already a peculiar, Modernist meaning attached to this world ‘pastoral’, which meaning was well understood in Rome. It was the false doctrine behind Humanae Vitae. It goes like this: One may not deny the truth of a Catholic doctrine, but this truth must be adjusted to circumstances. Thus the circumventing of births is wrong, but not in “hardship cases”. Fornication is wrong but “where genuine love exists…,” etc. These errors appear in the ‘updated’ catechisms.

The Council was to be not only ‘pastor’ but ‘ecumenical’, thus questioning all truth and the Church’s divinely given authority to teach and govern. In the words of Pius XI (Mortalium Animos), this ecumenism “utterly abandons divinely revealed religion.”

So then, aside from St. Paul’s prediction of an operation of error, Vatican II in all that it has done, reveals itself as a deliberate deception of the greatest magnitude.

The method? To say one thing and do another. The pope will speak for the right (or seem to) but always he will act for the left.

Early in the council the directing hand of Paul VI appears in all this. It is he who will sign the Vatican II articles. He will radically change Mass and sacraments. he will announce that “revelation is only at the beginning,” and so on.

The Vatican II popes will speak enough of what at least sounds like Catholic doctrine to satisfy the ‘conservatives’ and others who generally do not like ‘the changes.’ For instance, they speak words generally upholding marriage, while allowing unlimited ‘annulments.’ Every heresy and abuse among the bishops, the lower clergy, the religious, the teachers in the universities, and among publishers and writers, will be ignored by the Vatican II popes.

Lately a move has been announced to appease cultural and ‘Traditionalist’ Catholics, an uncertain and conditional seeming-promise to restore the Tridentine Mass. It will be some form of the John XXIII Mass (which resembled the ‘mass’ of occultist Bishop Leadbeater) which will appear again.

The Vatican II popes speak for the majority of Catholics, who ask only that they can somehow see the old Church in Vatican II. They have been given the words “nothing essential has been changed.” And, “The pope is the pope.”

“Near the end Satan must be loosed for a time.” Before all, Satan is the father of lies, so that St. John’s prediction follows and confirms that of St. Paul.

One of the false arguments the operation-of-error uses is that of the powers of this world. It is said that change is in the nature of things, and since that is so, the Church must change in our ‘advanced’ age.

There is no truth, no doctrine, no legitimate application of moral theology which has not been distorted and misused by the operators of error.

It is not suggested that since God sends the Spirit of Confusion, that we are not to resist its evils. But the completeness of the operation ought to be a caution to all who think to act or write in defense of the faith. There are wheels within wheels, and much harm can be done by those who do not have a fairly complete grasp of Vatican II and its methods. This I have known from the start of my own writings: All can be used. A sick, an apologetic, an accommodating or compromising writing is worse than none. It is necessary to grasp quite fully the depths of evil which is loosing of Satan makes possible. The devil is fiendishly clever.

That God sends the operation of error puts into a somewhat different light many things. For instance, my own thesis of the enemy within the Catholic Church. This is true, as far as it goes. But that enemy, this evil occupation of all the high offices in the Church, simply reflects, is a result and expression of, the Great Apostasy. As Fr. Coleridge has written about the AntiChrist, interpreting St. Paul, “He will come unto his own, and his own will receive him.” Nearly all have welcomed or defended the Vatican II popes.

Of course there is a conspiracy; there always is. But it has not been until the modern industrial age, when financial empires and technical developments, especially in communications, that it was possible for evil to become effectively organized.

That Catholics refuse to consider that these are the latter days, is one of the signs of the latter days. The early Christians were eager for the Second Coming. Catholics of our time refuse to hear of it.

Many sectarian preachers attach to the word ‘AntiChrist’ fantastic meanings, thus carrying on in their way Satan’s program of latter days confusion. But St. Thomas identifies the AntiChrist as one perfect in evil, perfectly opposed to Christ. That Paul VI effectively, in a unique way, opposed Christ in His Church, as no pope before him ever did, cannot be doubted by those who have watched the action from the beginning. Montini did so deceitfully, his ordinary language being what we call double-speak. “Nothing essential is being changed, absolutely not,” he has been more than once quoted as saying. The pope speaks for the right, but acts for the left, as no other man could possibly do. He leads as false pope the operation of error. He is the leader of the revolt.

The Scriptural prophecies have a mystery, a reserve about them, so that their full meaning may become apparent only at the time of fulfillment. The revolt and the operation of error are case in point.

For that matter, at no time do the devil’s assaults go beyond what is permitted by God for a good end. St. Thomas explains: The wicked angels assail men in two ways. Firstly by instigating them to sin; and thus thay are not sent by God to assail us, but are sometimes permitted to do so according to God’s just judgments. But sometimes their assault is a punishment to man: and thus they are sent by God’ as the the lying spirit was sent to punish Achab, King of Israel, as is related in Kings (XXX.20). For punishment is referred to God as its first author. Nevertheless the demons who are sent to punish, do so with an intention other than that for which they are sent; for they punish from hatred and envy; whereas they are sent by God on account of His justice.

Thus far St. Thomas. St. Paul’s operation of error is the great, extraordinary instance of God’s sending a ‘lying spirit,’ as this spirit was sent to King Achab. It is surely significant that throughout all the Council years the innovators spoke constantly of ‘the Spirit of Vatican II.’ which lying spirit was not long in manifesting itself.

The Spirit of Vatican II is no longer proclaimed. Instead they are trying to exlain away the abysmal failure of their promised renewal.

Granting the clarity, the certainty of St. Paul’s prediction does it apply to our time? Common sense easily sees the modern confusion about man’s ultimate purpose,and of man’s absorbing earthly concerns, to say nothing of growing immorality, the spread of paganism, including infanticide and sexual perversion. As mentioned above, these things have existed openly in other ages and were suitably punished. It has remained to the Catholic clergy whose responsibility it is to teach and govern according to the Truth, to put all of Catholic truth up for questioning. In effect, to deny certain knowledge of the Truth in an ‘ecumenical dialogue.’ It is not a question of individual error, here and there, but of an official declaration by pope and council that the modern church is no longer committed to teaching Catholic doctrine as it was taught in past centuries.

In plain words St. Paul speaks of a revolt: …for unless there come a revolt first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition. Here St. Paul directly connects the revolt and the son of perdition, spoken of elsewhere in Scripture as the AntiChrist. st. Paul’s connection is unavoidable. The AntiChrist will be leader of the revolt.

More than twelve years ago, it became apparent to me that Paul VI, by his words and actions, was not following the teachings of the popes but of, as he said, a “revelation only at the beginning.” He made dozens of such pronouncements, many of which I have quoted often. So then, what of Christ’s promise to preserve the popes from error? That promise I could not doubt. The ancient enemy could not lead into error a true pope. That one false to the papal office, a betrayer, sat in the papal chair was the inescapable, the only explanation in terms of Catholic doctrine. However, reluctantly one might come to this conclusion, there was no other. Surely such a significant occurance would appear in the Gospel, as it does, along with references to a great apostasy to arrive near the end of time.

My sights were fixed on Catholic doctrine. It is not necessary for most Catholics to understand all the connections. The very simple faithful may be capable of holding only to a general belief in all that the Catholic Church believes and teaches. Others may need to know more, to have a fairly complete knowledge of what has been predicted, as even a pope of this century predicted it. Christ, Himself had spoken of that time near the End when very little of faith would remain upon the earth.

As we know, the Gospels are for our instruction. We are told to ‘watch,’ that the End will come “like a thief in the night.’ (But not for the faithful)

The point I would stress here, is that Christ does not simply wait to be acted upon, or against, or as if He did not exist, or as if He were some other kind of Christ than Catholics have always known. ‘Who is Christ?’ words posed by Paul VI, thus suggesting a question yet to be answered by Vatican II.

To those who have despised His truths, who have treated His Real Presence lightly or with contempt, God sends His operation of error. Go acts; He remains in control. The devil does not operate against God in any contrary way, but is God’s own errand boy, the tempter. As St. Thomas and others teach, this was always so. The demons have their own hateful motives but are compelled to do the work of God. for a time near the End, Satan and his hordes will be frantically busy, having been given extraordinary freedom.

The Great Apostasy is not reversible. This follows certainly from the Gospel account, especially that of St. Paul. Again, St. Thomas: Wherefore although men be terrified by the signs appearing before judgment day, yet before these signs begin to appear, the wicked will think themselves to be in peace and security, after the death of AntiChrist and before (Paul VI & JPII) the coming of Christ, seeing that the world is not at once destroyed, as they thought hitherto.

When He gave up His life on the cross, Christ vanquished the devil, then and there. The conditions under which Satan is yet permitted to operate are for the greater glory of God. and so it will be, writes Fr. Fernand Prat, S.J., in his excellent study of the Gospels, up to the consummation of the ages, up to the limit fixed by God for the expansion of His Church.

All is in God’s plan, even to the last day. He is not frustrated in any way, not contested by the Devil, who, doing his own thing, full of hatred of God, yet does the will of God despite himself. The certain knowledge of all this is for our comfort, and puts in an altogether different light most of what we read about conspirators. Not of course that the conspiracies do not exist, but they are no more free from the power of God than the Devil, himself.

If God decrees the operation of error, then He decrees certain consequences, one of which is the ending of the Mass, in accordance with the prophecy of Daniel, of a time when the “continual sacrifice will be taken away.”

It is of course God who takes away the Mass, the continual sacrifice. Paul VI does the falsifying necessary for the destructive action to take place. he thus acts out the devil’s fury (as St. Thomas explains) while acting in accordance with what God has decreed.

Any person undertaking to write against Vatican II operation will soon be made aware of the confusion caused by self-styled Traditionalists. On they come, one after another, contending, quarreling, offering ‘solutions,’ rescue, or a substitute for the *(parish church) I had intended to say something about these things in this letter, but have decided to let it go until later, to be included in a brief survey of the state of Catholicism since the time of the First Vatican Council.

Note * Mr. Strojie was not a Sede Vacantist at this time.